Analysis of large-scale sequential data has been one of the most crucial tasks in areas such as bioinformatics, text, and audio mining. Existing string kernels, however, either (i) rely on local features of short substructures in the string, which hardly capture long discriminative patterns, (ii) sum over too many substructures, such as all possible subsequences, which leads to diagonal dominance of the kernel matrix, or (iii) rely on non-positive-definite similarity measures derived from the edit distance. Furthermore, while there have been works addressing the computational challenge with respect to the length of string, most of them still experience quadratic complexity in terms of the number of training samples when used in a kernel-based classifier. In this paper, we present a new class of global string kernels that aims to (i) discover global properties hidden in the strings through global alignments, (ii) maintain positive-definiteness of the kernel, without introducing a diagonal dominant kernel matrix, and (iii) have a training cost linear with respect to not only the length of the string but also the number of training string samples. To this end, the proposed kernels are explicitly defined through a series of different random feature maps, each corresponding to a distribution of random strings. We show that kernels defined this way are always positive-definite, and exhibit computational benefits as they always produce \emph{Random String Embeddings (RSE)} that can be directly used in any linear classification models. Our extensive experiments on nine benchmark datasets corroborate that RSE achieves better or comparable accuracy in comparison to state-of-the-art baselines, especially with the strings of longer lengths. In addition, we empirically show that RSE scales linearly with the increase of the number and the length of string.

Charge prediction which aims to determine appropriate charges for criminal cases based on textual fact descriptions, is an important technology in the field of AI&Law. Previous works focus on improving prediction accuracy, ignoring the interpretability, which limits the methods' applicability. In this work, we propose a deep neural framework to extract short but charge-decisive text snippets - rationales - from input fact description, as the interpretation of charge prediction. To solve the scarcity problem of rationale annotated corpus, rationales are extracted in a reinforcement style with the only supervision in the form of charge labels. We further propose a dynamic rationale attention mechanism to better utilize the information in extracted rationales and predict the charges. Experimental results show that besides providing charge prediction interpretation, our approach can also capture subtle details to help charge prediction.

We present a deep neural network-based methodology for synthesising percussive sounds with control over high-level timbral characteristics of the sounds. This approach allows for intuitive control of a synthesizer, enabling the user to shape sounds without extensive knowledge of signal processing. We use a feedforward convolutional neural network-based architecture, which is able to map input parameters to the corresponding waveform. We propose two datasets to evaluate our approach on both a restrictive context, and in one covering a broader spectrum of sounds. The timbral features used as parameters are taken from recent literature in signal processing. We also use these features for evaluation and validation of the presented model, to ensure that changing the input parameters produces a congruent waveform with the desired characteristics. Finally, we evaluate the quality of the output sound using a subjective listening test. We provide sound examples and the system's source code for reproducibility.

The goal of Ordinal Regression is to find a rule that ranks items from a given set. Several learning algorithms to solve this prediction problem build an ensemble of binary classifiers. Ranking by Projecting uses interdependent binary perceptrons. These perceptrons share the same direction vector, but use different bias values. Similar approaches use independent direction vectors and biases. To combine the binary predictions, most of them adopt a simple counting heuristics. Here, we introduce a novel cumulative sum scoring function to combine the binary predictions. The proposed score value aggregates the strength of each one of the relevant binary classifications on how large is the item's rank. We show that our modeling casts ordinal regression as a Structured Perceptron problem. As a consequence, we simplify its formulation and description, which results in two simple online learning algorithms. The second algorithm is a Passive-Aggressive version of the first algorithm. We show that under some rank separability condition both algorithms converge. Furthermore, we provide mistake bounds for each one of the two online algorithms. For the Passive-Aggressive version, we assume the knowledge of a separation margin, what significantly improves the corresponding mistake bound. Additionally, we show that Ranking by Projecting is a special case of our prediction algorithm. From a neural network architecture point of view, our empirical findings suggest a layer of cusum units for ordinal regression, instead of the usual softmax layer of multiclass problems.

--This research proposes a new (old) metric for evaluating goodness of fit in topic models, the coefficient of determination, or R 2 . Within the context of topic modeling, R 2 has the same interpretation that it does when used in a broader class of statistical models. Reporting R 2 with topic models addresses two current problems in topic modeling: a lack of standard cross-contextual evaluation metrics for topic modeling and ease of communication with lay audiences. The author proposes that R 2 should be reported as a standard metric when constructing topic models. I NTRODUCTION According to an often-quoted but never cited definition, "the goodness of fit of a statistical model describes how well it fits a set of observations. Measures of goodness of fit typically summarize the discrepancy between observed values and the values expected under the model in question." 1 Goodness of fit measures vary with the goals of those constructing the statistical model. Inferential goals may emphasize in-sample fit while predictive goals may emphasize out-of-sample fit. Prior information may be included in the goodness of fit measure for Bayesian models, or it may not. Goodness of fit measures may include methods to correct for model overfitting. In short, goodness of fit measures the performance of a statistical model against the ground truth of observed data. Fitting the data well is generally a necessary--though not sufficient--condition for trust in a statistical model, whatever its goals. Of course, goodness of fit is only one concern in statistical modeling.

--In this paper, we give an overview of the semantic gap problem in multimedia and discuss how machine learning and symbolic AI can be combined to narrow this gap. We describe the gap in terms of a classical architecture for multimedia processing and discuss a structured approach to bridge it. This approach combines machine learning (for mapping signals to objects) and symbolic AI (for linking objects to meanings). Our main goal is to raise awareness and discuss the challenges involved in this structured approach to multimedia understanding, especially in the view of the latest developments in machine learning and symbolic AI. A classic problem in multimedia representation and understanding is the semantic gap problem [1].

We consider a multi-agent model for fair division of mixed manna (i.e. items for which agents can have positive, zero or negative utilities), in which agents have additive utilities for bundles of items. For this model, we give several general impossibility results and special possibility results for three common fairness concepts (i.e. EF1, EFX, EFX3) and one popular efficiency concept (i.e. PO). We also study how these interact with common welfare objectives such as the Nash, disutility Nash and egalitarian welfares. For example, we show that maximizing the Nash welfare with mixed manna (or minimizing the disutility Nash welfare) does not ensure an EF1 allocation whereas with goods and the Nash welfare it does. We also prove that an EFX3 allocation may not exist even with identical utilities. By comparison, with tertiary utilities, EFX and PO allocations, or EFX3 and PO allocations always exist. Also, with identical utilities, EFX and PO allocations always exist. For these cases, we give polynomial-time algorithms, returning such allocations and approximating further the Nash, disutility Nash and egalitarian welfares in special cases.

Archaeologists in Yamagata, Japan said they have discovered a cluster of enormous, ancient geoglyphs in Southern Peru. The discovery was made with the help of cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology. A research group at Yamagata University identified 143 new geoglyphs etched into the desert terrains of Nazca in southern Peru. The giant land art pieces, known as the Nazca Lines, depict human-like figures and a variety of animals including birds, fish, snakes, foxes, felines, and camelids. Many can only be identified from the air due to their large size.

The Internet & Television Association (formerly the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and commonly known as the NCTA) estimates that 80% of residences in the United States have access to gigabit speeds from cable companies via HFC and FTTH. Cable operators seek to solidify their position within consumer markets for broadband services as wireless carriers seek to leverage the enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) component of 5G to gain a foothold for indoor residential and small business services. With little competition in the consumer in-home segment, certain wireless carriers see fixed wireless as a pathway to early revenue as their vendors work diligently to ensure eMBB services may be provided on a mobility basis rather than simply portable or fixed wireless solutions, which shall be predominate initially. A battleground is emerging for consumer broadband between cable companies espousing 10G (meaning symmetrical 10 Gbps speeds delivered over hybrid fiber-coaxial networks and not tenth generation) versus wireless carriers such as Verizon Wireless who will pursue the residential and small business market with fixed wireless 5G. Earlier this year, AT&T likewise stated that 5G will be a substitution for fixed-line broadband within the next three to five years. However, we see the consumer segment as a major challenge area for mobile communications service providers due to a few key factors including market inertia and deployment of WiFi6 devices.