Bio-Inspired Machine Learning for Distributed Confidential Multi-Portfolio Selection Problem

The recently emerging multi-portfolio selection problem lacks a proper framework to ensure that client privacy and database secrecy remain intact. Since privacy is of major concern these days, in this paper, we propose a variant of Beetle Antennae Search (BAS) known as Distributed Beetle Antennae Search (DBAS) to optimize multi-portfolio selection problems without violating the privacy of individual portfolios. DBAS is a swarm-based optimization algorithm that solely shares the gradients of portfolios among the swarm without sharing private data or portfolio stock information. DBAS is a hybrid framework, and it inherits the swarm-like nature of the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm with the BAS updating criteria. It ensures a robust and fast optimization of the multi-portfolio selection problem whilst keeping the privacy and secrecy of each portfolio intact. Since multi-portfolio selection problems are a recent direction for the field, no work has been done concerning the privacy of the database nor the privacy of stock information of individual portfolios. To test the robustness of DBAS, simulations were conducted consisting of four categories of multi-portfolio problems, where in each category, three portfolios were selected. To achieve this, 200 days worth of real-world stock data were utilized from 25 NASDAQ stock companies. The simulation results prove that DBAS not only ensures portfolio privacy but is also efficient and robust in selecting optimal portfolios

Zambian manufacturing performance in comparative perspective

This paper presents an analysis of Zambian manufacturing performance since 1964. It presents new estimates of labour productivity growth and total factor productivity growth. After a period of growth and labour productivity improvement till 1974, Zambian manufacturing suffered from increasing inefficiencies in an import substituting and interventionist environment. Growth of output slowed down, labour productivity and investment declined, though TFP showed some fluctuation. In the period of liberalisation between 1991-95, output shrank dramatically, TFP collapsed and labour productivity continued to decline. After 1995 indicators of performance point to a modest recovery. Following an industry-of-origin approach to international comparisons, the Zambian estimates are placed in comparative perspective in a binary comparison with the USA. In 1990, labour productivity in Zambia stood at 5.9 percent of the US level, while relative total factor productivity stood at 16.7 percent. Over time comparative labour productivity has been declining, indicating an increasing technology gap relative to the world frontier. By 1998, comparative labour productivity stood at 3.2 percent of the US level.

A Comparison of Soils and their Associated Microbial Communities as Affected by Sugarcane Cultivation

In Louisiana, sugarcane has been grown in the same soils for over 200 years. A phenomenon wherein soils with a long-term sugarcane cropping history produce decreased yields compared to adjacent land without a recent history of sugarcane cultivation has been documented in multiple sugarcane growing regions. Research in both Louisiana and internationally has shown positive plant growth responses when soils with a long-term cultivation history are sterilized or treated with selective biocides, suggesting there is a biological component to the underlying soil health issue. In this study, soil microbial ecology was compared for paired sites with short and long-term sugarcane cropping histories at six locations in plant cane and two in plant cane and first ratoon. Yield estimates of paired sites revealed crops grown in short-term cultivation soils generally out-yielded their long-term counterparts. Soil properties that can influence microbial ecology, including soil organic matter, macro and micronutrients, and soil extracellular enzymes, were generally present at higher levels in short-term cultivation soils, but varied by location. Root staining revealed greater fungal endophyte colonization in long-term cultivation soils. Distance-based redundancy analysis of fatty acid methyl ester biomarkers revealed differences in community structure based primarily on location but also cropping history. Analysis of 16S prokaryotic and ITS fungal amplicon-based metagenomic β-diversity data revealed prokaryotic community structure was also primarily influenced by location, whereas fungal communities differed based on cropping history. This suggests fungi are major contributors to the detrimental effects associated with sugarcane monoculture. Additional α-diversity comparisons of 16S and ITS metagenomes revealed portions of prokaryotic and fungal communities were more commonly associated with short and long-term sugarcane cultivation in both bulk and rhizosphere soils. Candidate microorganisms beneficial to sugarcane growth that were more abundant in soils with a short-term cropping history included 107 prokaryotic genera and 37 fungal genera in bulk soils and 97 prokaryotic genera and 46 fungal genera in rhizosphere soils. Candidate microorganisms detrimental to sugarcane growth that were more abundant in soils with a long-term cropping history included 117 prokaryotic genera and 58 fungal genera in bulk soils and 94 prokaryotic genera and 40 fungal genera in rhizosphere soils

Plan, Attend, Generate: Character-level Neural Machine Translation with Planning in the Decoder

We investigate the integration of a planning mechanism into an encoder-decoder architecture with an explicit alignment for character-level machine translation. We develop a model that plans ahead when it computes alignments between the source and target sequences, constructing a matrix of proposed future alignments and a commitment vector that governs whether to follow or recompute the plan. This mechanism is inspired by the strategic attentive reader and writer (STRAW) model. Our proposed model is end-to-end trainable with fully differentiable operations. We show that it outperforms a strong baseline on three character-level decoder neural machine translation on WMT'15 corpus. Our analysis demonstrates that our model can compute qualitatively intuitive alignments and achieves superior performance with fewer parameters.Comment: Accepted to Rep4NLP 2017 Workshop at ACL 2017 Conferenc

Waste management in the stingless bee Melipona beecheii Bennett (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

Waste management is important in insect societies because waste can be hazardous to adults, brood and food stores. The general organization of waste management and the influence of task partitioning, division of labor and age polyethism on waste processing were studied in three colonies of the tropical American stingless bee Melipona beecheii Bennett in Yucatán, Mexico. Waste generated in the colony (feces, old brood cells, cocoons, dead adults and brood) was collected by workers throughout the nest and taken to specific waste dumps within the nest. During the day, workers based at the waste dumps formed waste pellets, which they directly transferred in 93% of cases, to other workers who subsequently removed them from the nest. This is an example of task partitioning and is hypothesized to improve nest hygiene as has been found in leafcutting ants, Atta. To investigate division of labor and age polyethism we marked a cohort of 144 emerging workers. Workers forming waste pellets were on average 31.2±6.5 days old (±SD, N= 40, range of 18-45 days). The life span of M. beecheii workers was 49.0±14.0 days (N= 144). There was no difference in the life span of workers who formed (52.2±11.6 days, N= 40) or did not form (49.9±11.5 days, N= 97) waste pellets, suggesting that waste work did not increase mortality. Although waste was probably not hazardous to adults and brood, because the dumps are located outside the brood chamber, its presence inside the nests can attract phorid flies and predators, which can harm the colony

Luminescent iridium complexes used in Light Emitting Electrochemical Cells (LEECs)

EZ-C acknowledges the University of St Andrews for financial support. The authors would like to thank the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for financial support for Adam Henwood: EPSRC DTG Grants: EP/J500549/1; EP/K503162/1; EP/L505097/1.Cationic iridium(III) complexes represent the single largest class of emitters used in light emitting electrochemical cells (LEECs). In this chapter, we highlight the state-of-the-art emitters in terms of efficiency and stability in LEEC devices, highlighting blue, green, yellow/orange, red and white devices, and provide an outlook to the future of LEECs.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Natural symmetries of secondary Hochschild homology

We identify the group of framed diffeomorphisms of the torus as a semi-direct product of the torus with the braid group on 3 strands; we also identify the topological monoid of framed local-diffeomorphisms of the torus in similar terms. It follows that the framed mapping class group is this braid group. We show that the group of framed diffeomorphisms of the torus acts on twice-iterated Hochschild homology, and explain how this recovers a host of familiar symmetries. In the case of Cartesian monoidal structures, we show that this action extends to the monoid of framed local-diffeomorphisms of the torus. Based on this, we propose a definition of an unstable secondary cyclotomic structure, and show that iterated Hochschild homology possesses such in the Cartesian monoidal setting.Comment: 40 pages. Two appendices, one that collects a few facts about continuous monoid

Within- and between individual variability of personality characteristics and physical exercise

Using two independent samples, the study investigated links of within- and between-individual variability in personality states in three personality domains—Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness—with physical activity. Activity was defined as self-reported quantity of exercising or walking/cycling. More physical activity was associated with people reporting higher levels of Extraversion and Conscientiousness than they usually did, with the associations clearly replicating across samples and generalizing to all items of these domains. This pattern tended to reflect associations at the level of between-individual differences. When the three domains simultaneously predicted activity, within-individual variance in Neuroticism also emerged as a positive predictor, whereas between-individual level associations waned. The findings are consistent with within-individual differences in personality ratings reflecting meaningful, context-relevant variability