Africa
A Supervised Geometry-Aware Mapping Approach for Classification of Hyperspectral Images
Mohanty, Ramanarayan, Happy, S L, Routray, Aurobinda
The multi-path scattering of light within a pixel [1], bidirectional reflectance distribution [2], and the heterogeneity of sub-pixel constituents [3] are the major concerns in the hyperspectral (HS) data classification. These nonlinearity properties naturally place the HS data on a non-euclidean space. Handling these high dimensional redundant data in a non-euclidean space is one of the major bottlenecks in HS data analysis. Typically, HS classification consists of dimensionality reduction (DR) and subsequent classification operation. The popular DR methods such as principal component analysis (PCA) [4] and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) [5] are linear and operate on Euclidean structures. These linear DR methods skip the curved nonlinear structures of the HS data. On the other hand, manifold learning helps in recovering compact, meaningful low dimensional structures from those complex high dimensional data from a non-euclidean space. The manifold learning methods consider the real world high dimensional data to be generated with a few degrees of freedom [6]. This leads to the projection of the data into lower dimensional space while preserving their underlying geometrical structure [7].
Natural Language Processing for Information Extraction
With rise of digital age, there is an explosion of information in the form of news, articles, social media, and so on. Much of this data lies in unstructured form and manually managing and effectively making use of it is tedious, boring and labor intensive. This explosion of information and need for more sophisticated and efficient information handling tools gives rise to Information Extraction(IE) and Information Retrieval(IR) technology. Information Extraction systems takes natural language text as input and produces structured information specified by certain criteria, that is relevant to a particular application. Various sub-tasks of IE such as Named Entity Recognition, Coreference Resolution, Named Entity Linking, Relation Extraction, Knowledge Base reasoning forms the building blocks of various high end Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks such as Machine Translation, Question-Answering System, Natural Language Understanding, Text Summarization and Digital Assistants like Siri, Cortana and Google Now. This paper introduces Information Extraction technology, its various sub-tasks, highlights state-of-the-art research in various IE subtasks, current challenges and future research directions.
The Goldilocks zone: Towards better understanding of neural network loss landscapes
Fort, Stanislav, Scherlis, Adam
We explore the loss landscape of fully-connected neural networks using random, low-dimensional hyperplanes and hyperspheres. Evaluating the Hessian, $H$, of the loss function on these hypersurfaces, we observe 1) an unusual excess of the number of positive eigenvalues of $H$, and 2) a large value of $\mathrm{Tr}(H) / |H|$ at a well defined range of configuration space radii, corresponding to a thick, hollow, spherical shell we refer to as the \textit{Goldilocks zone}. We observe this effect for fully-connected neural networks over a range of network widths and depths on MNIST and CIFAR-10 with the $\mathrm{ReLU}$ non-linearity. The effect is not observed for the $\tanh$ non-linearity. Using our observations, we demonstrate a close connection between the Goldilocks zone, measures of local convexity/prevalence of positive curvature, and the suitability of a network initialization. We show that the high and stable accuracy reached when optimizing on random, low-dimensional hypersurfaces is directly related to the overlap between the hypersurface and the Goldilocks zone. We note that common initialization techniques initialize neural networks in this particular region of unusually high convexity, and offer a geometric intuition for their success. We take steps towards an analytic description of the general features of the loss function geometry, exploring its anisotropy and strong radial dependence. We support our theoretical results with experiments. Furthermore, we demonstrate that initializing a neural network at a number of points and selecting for high measures of local convexity such as $\mathrm{Tr}(H) / |H|$, number of positive eigenvalues of $H$, or low initial loss, leads to statistically significantly faster training on MNIST. Based on our observations, we hypothesize that the Goldilocks zone contains a high density of suitable initialization configurations.
NHS70: How Has Technology Changed Our Healthcare?
Approximately 330,000 cataract operations are performed in England alone and it all started with the introduction of the intraocular lens. Sir Harold Ridley was the first to successfully implant an intraocular lens on 29 November 1949, at St Thomas' Hospital at London, however, it wasn't until the 1970s, following further developments in lens design and surgical techniques, that the lens found acceptance in cataract surgery. Laser eye surgery then followed on from the intraocular lens in the 1990s.
Tinder adds GIF-like video loops to spice up your dating profile
If you're a dating app regular, you know that a photo only says so much about yourself. But do you really want to go to the trouble of recording a whole video for people who could swipe left before you've even spoken a word? Tinder thinks there's a better balance between the two. It's launching a Loops feature that (surprise) adds two-second looping videos to your profile alongside the usual still shots. You just have to trim an existing video to portray yourself as a fun-loving party person or tender romantic. The feature is initially available for iOS users in the US, UK, Canada and large chunks of Western Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Artificial intelligence... for animals, Sustainable States, Click - BBC World News
Researchers at the University of Wyoming are working with online community Snapshot Serengeti to develop artificial intelligence that can identify, count and describe wild animals in Tanzania. Over 3.2 million pictures of animals - captured by hidden cameras - have been identified by Snapshot Serengeti volunteers and the data collected is being used to power the AI algorithm, using deep neural networks.
Will Artificial Intelligence Make Citizen Scientists Obsolete? - Pacific Standard
In Serengeti National Park, there are 225 hidden cameras constantly photographing the creatures that roam this Tanzanian wilderness. To date, these camera traps have captured more than three million images. Through Serengeti Snapshot, as the program is called, they've studied everything from the migrations of the region's herbivores to the surprising co-existence of lions, hyenas, and cheetahs. It's work that wouldn't have been possible without an army of 30,000 citizen scientists, who manually sorted the collection, identifying and naming the species in each frame. It's time-consuming work, and the volunteers are doing it for kicks.
Groupe PSA and Inria create an OpenLab dedicated to artificial intelligence - Automotive World
Groupe PSA and Inria today announced the creation of an OpenLab dedicated to artificial intelligence. The studied areas will include autonomous and intelligent vehicles, mobility services, manufacturing, design development tools, the design itslelf and digital marketing as well as quality and finance. "Artificial intelligence will quickly become an efficiency factor for the group. The OpenLab will work on artificial intelligence algorithms enabling autonomous vehicles to drive in complex environments for example. It will also work on predictive maintenance, powertrain design optimisation and the modelling of complex systems such as cities, to offer mobility services adapted to people's needs" said Carla Gohin, Groupe PSA's Vice President for Research and Advanced Engineering. Inria's project teams will participate in this OpenLab bringing their high-level algorithmic expertise as part of a fruitful dialogue with Groupe PSA's experts on all the identified topics.
New Tokyo research center aims to boost Japan's 'Fourth Industrial Revolution'
The newly established Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in the Japanese capital aims to update old regulations that hinder effective usage of cutting-edge technologies and accelerate social change by developing appropriate policy frameworks for a rapidly changing society, said Chizuru Suga, who heads the institution. "In short, what we are trying to do is like determining the size of a soccer goal before playing the game. We are trying to set up common policy frameworks that help people play a fair game," she said during a recent interview with The Japan Times. "Today's technology has been advancing so fast that no one could have been able to catch up with the most up-to-date movement and set the rules … to benefit as many people as possible," said Suga, originally from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). The Tokyo facility, which opened Monday, is the first sister institution of the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco.