In various application domains, data can be represented as bags of vectors. Learning functions over such bags is a challenging problem. In this paper, a neural network approach, based on cascade-correlation networks, is proposed to handle this kind of data. By defining special aggregation units that are integrated in the network, a general framework to learn functions over bags is obtained. Res...

Citation: (2005) Correction: As the Antarctic ice pack recedes, a fragile ecosystem hangs in the balance. PLoS Biol 3(6): e224.

The main focus of the thesis is to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the impacts on environment of plastic bags through a life cycle assessment. Based on a literature review, the international experiences from Ireland, Bangladesh and Canada on plastic bags policies are addressed. After 8 years implementation of plastic bags regulations, there are still existing some problems in China. The...

We conducted an experiment in Niger to evaluate the performance of hermetic triple layer (Purdue Improved Crop Storage- PICS) bags for the preservation of shelled and unshelled groundnut Arachis hypogaea L. Naturally-infested groundnut was stored in PICS bags and woven bags for 6.7 months. After storage, the average oxygen level in the PICS bags fell from 21% to 18% (v/v) and 21%-15% (v/v) for ...

QUESTION Are use and perceived load of school bags and the prevalence of spinal pain different between male and female adolescents? Is use of school bags related to perceived load of school bags? Are use and perceived load of school bags related to spinal pain? DESIGN Cross-sectional observational study. PARTICIPANTS 1202 adolescents recruited from the 'Raine' Cohort Study. OUTCOME MEASUR...

Metric learning aims at finding a distance that approximates a task-specific notion of semantic similarity. Typically, a Mahalanobis distance is learned from pairs of data labeled as being semantically similar or not. In this paper, we learn such metrics in a weakly supervised setting where “bags” of instances are labeled with “bags” of labels. We formulate the problem as a multiple instance le...