The Ubuntu Dialogue Corpus: A Large Dataset for Research in Unstructured Multi-Turn Dialogue Systems

This paper introduces the Ubuntu Dialogue Corpus, a dataset containing almost 1 million multi-turn dialogues, with a total of over 7 million utterances and 100 million words. This provides a unique resource for research into building dialogue managers based on neural language models that can make use of large amounts of unlabeled data. The dataset has both the multi-turn property of conversations in the Dialog State Tracking Challenge datasets, and the unstructured nature of interactions from microblog services such as Twitter. We also describe two neural learning architectures suitable for analyzing this dataset, and provide benchmark performance on the task of selecting the best next response.Comment: SIGDIAL 2015. 10 pages, 5 figures. Update includes link to new version of the dataset, with some added features and bug fixes. See: https://github.com/rkadlec/ubuntu-ranking-dataset-creato

Audit 2017: how democratic is local government in Northern Ireland?

Local authorities play key roles in the devolved government of Northern Ireland, as expressions of communities that were in the past highly polarised on religious and political lines. They are also the only other source of elected legitimacy to the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive, and can act as checks and balances on the domestic concentration of power. As part of the 2017 Audit of UK Democracy, James Pow explores how democratically local councils have operated in difficult conditions

Antimicrobial Resistance Of Escherichia Coli Isolates In Pig Farm Workers, Normal And Diarrhoeic Pigs

The enumeration of coliforms in faeces can be per formed by both the spread plate method or Most Probable Number ( MPN ) techniques , although MPN total coliform counts are significantly higher ( P<0.05 ) . In so lid agar media enumeration , MacConkey , Desoxycholate , Eosin-Methylene Blue and ENDO agars are suitable media for the enumeration of coliforms . The correlation coefficients of counts among media and technique is high . The mean colony forming unit ( CFU ) counts per gram for coliform in faeces varied from 2 . 6-6 . 4 X 107 and 1 . 8-2 . 7 X 108 for the pigs and form workers tested respectively . Random identification of 291 colonies on MacConkey agar on the basis of frequency of occurrence of numbers of lactose and nonlactose fermenters yielded 94 . 2 % Escherichia coli (E.coli).The other genera isolated includes Enterobacter , Klebsiella , Edwarsiella , Citrobacter and Serratia . About 8.2 % and 29.6 % of the E. coli isolates were non-lactose fermenters on MacConkey agar and did not show the characteristic green metallic sheen on Eosin- Methylene Blue agar respectively

Latin American perspectives to internationalize undergraduate information technology education

The computing education community expects modern curricular guidelines for information technology (IT) undergraduate degree programs by 2017. The authors of this work focus on eliciting and analyzing Latin American academic and industry perspectives on IT undergraduate education. The objective is to ensure that the IT curricular framework in the IT2017 report articulates the relationship between academic preparation and the work environment of IT graduates in light of current technological and educational trends in Latin America and elsewhere. Activities focus on soliciting and analyzing survey data collected from institutions and consortia in IT education and IT professional and educational societies in Latin America; these activities also include garnering the expertise of the authors. Findings show that IT degree programs are making progress in bridging the academic-industry gap, but more work remains

Antimicrobial resistance of e. coli isolates from pig farm workers, nondiarrhoeic and diarrhoeic piglets

Antimicrobial resistance of 274 E. coli isolates from farm workers, nondiarrhoeic and diarrhoeic piglets to 11 antimicrobial agents was investigated to determine the antimicrobial resistance pattern of E. coli. Five pig farm were involved in this study. Antibacterial resistance was significantly higher (p>0.01) and almost 100% for Sulphasoxazole, streptomycin, and tetracylin in porcine isolate compared with the human isolate. The means percentage of antibiotic resistance between farms were not significantly different (p>0.05) irrespective of source of isolate. statistical analysis showed that the antibiotic resistance were significantly lower (p<0.05) in farm worker and isolates than in nondiarrhoeic and diarrhoeic piglet isolate. The percentage of isolate resistant to at least eight antibiotic were 27.7, 5.6 and 1.0 for isolates from diarrhoeic, nondiarrhoeic piglets and farm workers respectively. the present study also indicated that the mean antimicrobial resistance was significantly higher in larger farms (p<0.01) and in farms without a resident veterinarian (p<0.05)

Oblique incidence reflectometry: optical-fiber implementation

A new, simple and quick approach, oblique-incidence reflectometry, was used to measure the absorption and reduced scattering coefficients of a semi-infinite turbid medium. An obliquely incident light beam causes the center of the far diffuse reflectance to shift from the point of incidence, where the far diffuse reflectance refers to the diffuse reflectance that is several transport mean free paths away from the incident point. The amount of shift yields the diffusion constant by a simple formula, and the slope of the diffuse reflectance yields the attenuation coefficient. Only the relative profile of the diffuse reflectance is needed to deduce both optical parameters, which makes this method attractive in clinical settings because it does not require a stringent calibration for absolute quantity measurements. This method was tested theoretically by Monte Carlo simulations and experimentally by a reflectometer. Because this method can be used to measure optical properties of biological tissues quickly and requires on inexpensive equipment, it has potential clinical application to the diagnosis of disease or monitoring of treatments

Psychosocial and quality of life outcomes of prosthetic auricular rehabilitation with CAD/CAM technology.

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Oral perception/motor ability in edentulous patients with stroke and Parkinsonism

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Salivary Anionic Changes after Radiotherapy for Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: A 1-Year Prospective Study

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Passive smoking: secondhand smoke does cause respiratory disease.

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